Leaving Twitter with Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

In 2016, I removed all social networks permanently. Well almost all, except Twitter.

Now, it is time to get rid of Twitter as well. However, I am not ready to delete it fully yet. So, I devised a plan to block access for one year using Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme (SSSS).

In Harry Potter speak, Voldemort would have run:

ssss-split -t 1 -n 7

This means, there are 7 splits (of his soul) and any one of them keeps him immortal.

Here is my plan:

1. Generate a password (passphrase variant) using Bitwarden Password Generator and keep it in the clipboard.

2. Change Twitter password.

3. brew install ssss (it is an implementation of Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme).

4. ssss-split -t 4 -n 7 to split the password into 7 chunks, 4 of which are needed to reconstruct it

   1. Use futureme dot org to send me 1 split in 1 year from now.

   2. Use superpost dot com to send myself 1 split, this will be the only split that I would keep.

   3. Give 1 split each to friends / family who won’t budge until the one-year period is over.

   4. tl;dr Distribute the 7 splits such that getting 4 of them in a year should be safe enough.

5. Test the password retrieval with ssss-combine, this ensures that everything is in order. Passphrase variant makes it easy to cross check.

6. Yeet the password from the clipboard.

Risks

• I am unable to retrieve 4 splits when the time comes → that’s alright, not being able to access Twitter is something I can live with

  • Though if this happens, I won’t be able to delete past posts → on the fence about that, but I do believe that the internet is written in ink, my current self is willing to live with this risk

• Someone gets access to my 4 secrets → not an issue, there is a 2FA layer in between

What’s next?

I am not doing this because I spend a lot of time on socials (spoken like a true addict, eh?). I follow minimalism at both digital and physical levels and have no apps installed, I use socials from web versions which is much less addictive. I don’t spend a lot of time on social networks. But it does affect my attention, I do tend to get nerd sniped by cool things happening out there and end up losing time / attention as a second order effect.

Twitter has given me many friends and connections, the feeling of meeting an internet person in real life for the first time is always amazing.

However, over the recent years the general quality has dropped with the onset of politics and bots. In the past, posting 100 tweets might yield 10 meaningful connections. Now, it yields maybe 1 in 100 (or fewer).

I will replace Twitter and find better ways to connect with people in real life and will use this extra time and attention to practice cool things that interest me. Mostly that would be writing software, mathematics, football analytics and movies. Looking forward to diving deep into several topics with Shugyo (修行) in mind.

With this Twitter block my social network posture remains:

• Instagram - not a problem, it is a private account with like 27 followers, close friends and family.

• LinkedIn - nothing changes, it is a professional network.

• Twitter - blocked.

• Bsky - exists, I don’t really use it, so don’t need to change anything.

• HackerNews - not a problem, I sometimes submit Show HNs that don’t get a lot of traction.

• I have no other social accounts.

In an ideal world, I will be in a place where I can just delete Twitter once I am back next year.

I will continue to write on this blog, mostly long-form content. Feel free to subscribe and let’s stay in touch.